Saturday, January 26, 2013

They've got nothing on Egyptian soccer fans. And by nothing, I mean NOTHING:

Twenty-one men were sentenced to hang over the riot after a game in the city of Port Said between the local club, Al-Masry, and Al-Ahly of Cairo, in which 74 died last February. Visiting supporters were stabbed, crushed and in some cases thrown from the terraces in what seemed from live television pictures to be a premeditated assault.

Al-Ahly supporters and relatives of the dead celebrated the verdict when it was read out in the Cairo court to which the case had been moved.

But in Port Said relatives of the defendants tried to storm the prison where they were being held. Two policemen were shot dead in the melee before the authorities fought back. By late afternoon, local health authorities said a total of 27 people had died, including two football players, more than had been sentenced in the first place.

A real tragedy. I can only conclude Egypt does not have sufficient gun control.

46 Comments:

Honestly, only pc bullshat and FIFA's never ending need to be loved by third world pygmies keeps whole federations from being banned. In the 80's the biggest club in the world Liverpool was banned for 5 YEARS from any European competition over Hooliganism charges and a bad display of violence in Italy. It was deserved. In Egypt, Serbia, etc. people are literally attacking players and killing fans and yet nothing.Oh well we don't think they can behave so we won't hold them to the same standard. It is sickening.

If a country cannot at least refrain from killing each other over a game, then they do not deserve the beautiful game.

Continuing my last point, just think how quick the silliness would stop in Mexico and the like if FIFA dangled a year or more ban over their national team, etc. Maybe then they would stop hurling piss on opposing players and fans. All one needs to do is youtube soccer craziness and the level of violence is staggering.

What is it about soccer/soccer fans that seems to transcend geographics and culture to account for the violence? Maybe it is just the culture of soccer now.

Thinking about this further it doesn't seem to matter if it is a 3rd world country or some promient European nation.

If you change the sport the behavior seems to disappear. I suppose some 3rd world countries would still be violent even if were baseball ... frisbee ... whatever.

Consider somehthing like, making it up, the World Arab Baseball International Teams (WABIT). Beheadings with knives, swords and saws. Removing limbs. The 100 virgin rape. Feeding one another to the dogs ...

"Egypt a century ago, under the firm and inspired hand of Lord Cromer, was a boomtown, a miracle and a paradise. A multicultural paradise, even, with Frenchmen and Brits and Greeks and Jews and Turks and Armenians - all of whom the Century of Fear would later send fleeing with a single suitcase. But as late as the '30s "Alex" was a city of the civilized world - a place where boho trustafarians, like Lawrence Durrell, would move as if to Prague, just because it was a fun cool cheap place to live. Architecture from this period can still be seen, chipped and obscured by smoke, behind the howling mobs and growling tanks in your YouTube clip."(...)

What is it about soccer/soccer fans that seems to transcend geographics and culture to account for the violence? Maybe it is just the culture of soccer now.

I remember going to a few soccer games when I was abroad; they were high scoring games (6-3, 5-2), which helped aid my American bloodlust for high level, actually interesting, sports competition. I never have gotten why the violence occurs at soccer games, be they in the U.K or a 3rd world hell hole.

Looking at our own series of sports related violence in the U.S. over the years, all I have to say to those that start the violence: are you all that pathetic? Are you truly that much of a loser that watching your team lose, while painful (I say this having seen my teams take horrible hits), causes you to riot and destroy property and put peoples' lives in danger? There's always next season. Grow up.

Let's import large numbers of these fans to the U.S. What could go wrong? Our society could mirror theirs...shhh, we're not supposed to know that!

"I remember going to a few soccer games when I was abroad; they were high scoring games (6-3, 5-2), which helped aid my American bloodlust for high level, actually interesting, sports competition. I never have gotten why the violence occurs at soccer games, be they in the U.K or a 3rd world hell hole."

Because growing up, it is all they love. It is the only sport they can afford to play because all it takes is a ball. They become so enamored with the game that it becomes their passion. It reminds them of their child hood, and of a time when all they had were dreams. To see their team lose brings them back to reality, a reality they despise.

This riot is not about football. A little bit of rioting after a big game is normal. However, rioting and killing on this scale is not normal. Of course, nobody in the media (not even al-Jazeera) will tell you why Port Said is particularly upset with the central government ("Cairo") - whether it's a regional hostility, or that just there are more opponents of the current regime in Port Said than elsewhere.

If the United States were particularly close to a civil war (or were in the middle of a lull in one), I could easily see this happening to the Redskins or the Washington Wizards when playing in Texas.

Despite the similarities, Raiders Nation fans aren't Gayrab hooligans. Besides the neglected pitbulls in the backyard and their litter of kids dressed up to look like Vin Diesel douchebags, they have some sense of civility. Hence the Raider doormats on the back porch buried underneath a pile of used lightbulbs.

The game looks like an excuse, but I don't expect Al'Jazeera or the Lamestream Media to say that people are not being happy living under The Religion of Peace (tm).

Actually, the linked article provides some background:

The verdicts in the football trial could not have come at a worse time. The case was heavily political - the fan base of Al-Ahly, known as the Al-Ahly Ultras, came out in force to join in the anti-Mubarak uprising, and many supporters allege the riot in Port Said was organised as a revenge attack by Mubarak-era officials, including some close to the club’s management.

I am disappointed in myself for not reading to the very end of the cited article. I got 2/3 of the way down and stopped.

This incident has nearly nothing to do with Soccer.

But due to zenO's attention to detail it is very much about a people paying a price for resisting a worse tyranny, a rigged election and a fight for freedom ... as evidenced by the paragraphs prior to zenO's ...

"In a worrying development, rioters included young men dressed in black and wearing masks who identified themselves as the Black Mask Bloc, a new group apparently modelled on anarchist factions in 1970s Europe and dedicated to attacking the authorities.

“We had to appear officially to fight against the regime of the fascist tyrants, the Muslim Brotherhood and its military wing,” a launch video posted online said."

I say we are all born with a computer glitch or a "bug" in the programming of our brain and that bug is related to the emotion called "anger" and it comes out in every activity we engage in, even in our games, but shucks, no one believes me.

Frankly, you've got to have something to do during the game. Watching a bunch of underfed, semi-swarthy types jogging back and forth all afternoon is bound to leave you stir crazy after the first, what do they call it? Menstrual cycle? No, that's not quite right. Period. That's it.

And when one of my partners dragged me to a kickball affair and the the clock ran out only to have the officials declare some indeterminate amount of "Extra time", I ceratinly was ready to commit some mayhem.

Frankly, you've got to have something to do during the game. Watching a bunch of underfed, semi-swarthy types jogging back and forth all afternoon is bound to leave you stir crazy after the first, what do they call it? Menstrual cycle? No, that's not quite right. Period. That's it.

Vox plays kickball too. He's being a big silly, hangin' out with the guys during their periods. That makes him a tough brute manly-man.

Never going to be one defending the "THERE'S HONOR ON SOCCER" dipshits, but a discussion on which ball-chasing sport is better is so...meaningless.

Well I'm sure you're joking, but no, of course they didn't. Just as Turkey didn't used to be full of Turks prior to the battle of Manzikert, and England didn't used to be full of Angles.

"If a country cannot at least refrain from killing each other over a game, then they do not deserve the beautiful game."

Well of course not: nobody deserves baseball except for Americans, and maybe the Japanese because they're so enthusiastic; and besides, whenever they aren't trying to kill everybody on earth, or rape animated schoolgirls with what look like giant octopus tentacles, the Japanese deserve any dispensation you could give them, yes?

By "the beautiful game" I assume you mean baseball, as any sane person with a lick of good taste would. Surely you weren't referring to that abomination with the checkered rubber ball and the endless running around and the snoring and stuff?